We are using Delphi 5 Enterprise and just purchased SDAC for Delphi 5 to
access a table on a MSSQL 2008 R2 server.

Unfortunately the table has NCHAR fields. These are only shown as [MEMO]
in dbtable grid and editor. Could it be that access to UNICODE field types
is not possible using Delphi 5?
(However the Column Editor in Designmode shows correct contents)

You are right, you cannot show Unicode characters in visual components in Delphi 5 because Delphi 5 doesn't support Unicode. But the problem with the NCHAR field mapped as TMemoField has nothing to do with it. Please check that the TMSQuery.Options.LongStrings property is set to True. This property is used to represent string fields with the length that is greater than 255 as TStringField, not as TMemoField.

Marcovaldo wrote:
Just tried to :
- Crosscheck LongStrings = true
- Tried to assign a TNT component as default component for the field
Marcovaldo

Unfortunately this was not successful.
Do you have any information D5 can be used to _retrieve_
Wide Strings (I know about the limitation that the standard VCL doesn't
support Unicode, but I need only the data (which indeed will not be unicode
but I suppose, only ANSI stuffed into NCHAR fields; unfortunately it's a
customers MSSQL server and I cannot change the config..

Marcovaldo wrote:
Didn't get it running properly, but found a workaround (kind of)

1) I placed a TNT DBEdit on form and assigned to DataSource/Field
(This still shows the [Memo] placeholder]

2) somewhere in code I assign:
Edit2.Text := MSQuery1.Fields[2].AsString;
The AsString returns the Field contents OK,
(If the TNTDBEdit switches into Edit mode, however the
content is replaced by '[Memo]' again, but I can prevent this..)

I've installed TNT components, but still cannot reproduce the problem. Please specify a script to create your table, and the exact field(s) which values are shown as (MEMO) in the TTntDBEdit and TTntDBGrid components.

1) Thx for the quick answer and your efforts!
2) Will be at customer again tomorrow and will then be able to post more
information.

=> My last impression was when testing with dbVisualizer is that the
customer defined the view under question using NVARCHAR(max) which
results in a CLOB column. I suppose that this CLOB datatype is what
causes the troubles